In the messy sausage-making process of drafting federal legislation, sometimes items make it into the language of a bill without drawing much public attention.
One such item is the repeal of the Johnson Amendment, which is included in the massive tax overhaul working its way through Congress, and which looks increasingly likely to become law.
For 63 years the Johnson Amendment has bolstered the wall of separation between church and state by forbidding nonprofit religious institutions from endorsing political candidates or engaging in partisan political activity. This is a sensible rule, given the tax-exempt status of those institutions and the lack of transparency about donations.
Segments of the religious right, however, have long chafed under this restriction, saying it interferes with their right of free speech. Now, with the power in Washington having shifted in their direction, their wish may come true: The Johnson Amendment, named after then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson, could become history.
This would be an anti-democratic travesty, and we strongly oppose the repeal.
We are not alone in this view. As our story reveals, 55 Jewish nonprofits and religious institutions recently wrote an open letter condemning repeal of the Johnson Amendment. They, like the local Jewish religious leaders also quoted in the article, understand that once the church-state wall is breached, the First Amendment is threatened.
American elections are already under threat from big money. The Supreme Court’s appalling 2010 Citizens United decision, which essentially labeled money as speech, opened the door to all kinds of dark money flooding into our elections.
Without the protections of the Johnson Amendment, a new and potentially poisonous source of big money will surely begin influencing campaigns, and not in a good way.
Also threatened would be the religious mission of houses of worship. As one local rabbi put it, people come to synagogue to pray and find spiritual fulfillment in community. Introducing partisan politics into the mix would be divisive and, ultimately, destructive.
While it’s fair to debate the wisdom of granting churches, synagogues and other houses of worship tax-exempt status, on the whole the status quo has been beneficial to the health of America’s religious life.
Repeal of the Johnson Amendment undermines that health. We must do what we can to keep naked partisan politics off the pulpit and away from the bimah. It’s good for democracy, and good for our souls.
So the only big money that should influence elections is corporate america and rich lefties like Soros?
And seriously you think if a rabbi explained he was voting for clinton or Trump and why would turn the congregation into mindless robots that would do his will?
You don’t think the majority of drashes in liberal Jewish shuls that are basically political speech advocating lefty positions loosely tied (and frankly most if the time directly contradicting) to torah aren’t political speech?
You think the phrase “and I’m voting for Hillary” is somehow magic? Cause that’s all this is about.
And seriously they all voted for Clinton or Sanders. A trump voter walking into a reform synagogue in San Francisco is taking their life into their hands.
In this day and age affiliation with a particular place of worship other than the Catholic Church is defacto political affiliation.
Religious organizations, especially liberal Jewish ones, seem to be constantly engaging in issue advocacy using the names of their organization which I personally find inappropriate. I think if you truly enforced the spirit of the Johnson amendment the urj would have lost it’s tax exempt status decades ago.
But religious people expressing political ideas and impacting political decisions is actually very American.
The entire civil rights movement was run out of black churches. It was the reverend Martin Luther King that had a dream. Not the ACLU.
The Johnson amendment was put together by a guy who knew southern churches would be preaching that he was the devil and wanted a stick to beat them with to make them shut up. It was cheap and mean and unamerican. And largely ignored. And ineffective. The folks going to conservative churches weren’t voting for him anyway.
This is just a cynical hypocritical position aimed at keeping people in flyover country from having any more of a voice.
It’s mean and unamerican.
It’s ironic that you start your piece with the observation that there are times “items make it into the language of a bill without drawing much public attention,” because that is how the Johnson Amendment made it into law. If it were debated at the time, it never would have made it into law. Religious institutions do not need government to protect them from undue political influence. Government has for 63 years proscribed the freedom of religious institutions. Religious institutions are not tax exempt because government allows it. They are tax exempt because they are separate and apart from government as enshrined in the first amendment. Government is not G-d.